ALEX GARZA: The Communities We Keep
Alex Garza revisits The Downtownies ten years later at The Kimbell
What makes a place feel like home?
It’s rarely just the buildings. It’s the people we recognize across the room. The business owner who always knows our name. The musician we’ve heard a hundred times. The artist whose work has become part of the landscape. The familiar faces we may not know well at all, but whose presence somehow tells us we’re home.
Nearly ten years ago, photographer Alex Garza set out to capture some of those faces.
In December 2016, Garza created The Downtownies, a collection of large-scale portraits celebrating the people who gave Downtown Bryan its particular character — artists, musicians, business owners, makers, neighbors and familiar faces. The original portraits were exhibited at The Village in Downtown Bryan.
A decade later, Alex is looking at the community again.
This August, as The Kimbell’s Artist in Residence, Garza presents The Communities We Keep, an exhibition centered around a new generation of Downtownies: 50 large-scale portraits that together create a snapshot of Downtown Bryan in 2026.
Some faces are familiar. Some are new. And, inevitably, some are missing.
That passage of time is an important part of the exhibition.
During the opening on First Friday, August 7, guests will also have a special opportunity to step inside The Kimbell’s Great Hall for a first sneak peek at the space. There, Alex has created an ethereal, reflective and interactive installation honoring members of our community who have died in the years since the original Downtownies exhibition.
It is a quieter counterpart to the portraits — a moment to remember that communities are shaped not only by the people who are here now, but also by the people whose lives and contributions remain part of a place long after they are gone.
There is something particularly meaningful to us about Alex bringing The Downtownies back now.
The original portraits were exhibited at The Village, a place Kristy Petty operated for 15 years as a gathering place in Downtown Bryan. Ten years later, the work returns inside The Kimbell, where Kristy and Cassidy Barton are building a new kind of gathering place around art, performance and community.
In its own way, The Downtownies has become a record of what happened in between.
An artist between communities
Alex’s own story makes the exhibition’s exploration of community and identity even richer.
An award-winning photographer, Alex grew up along the Texas–Mexico border, and much of his work considers culture, identity, personal history and our relationship to the places we call home. His practice moves between old and new photographic traditions — wet plate collodion, film and handmade processes alongside digital photography, projection and multimedia work.
He is also someone who resists fitting neatly into a single description.
He’s a photographer and a Spanish instructor. A woodworker and a musician who plays guitar, trumpet and accordion. An Aggie, a Trekkie, a movie buff, an expert on all things Texican and, by his own admission, a recent convert to Aggie football. He is an enthusiastic Frank’s Hot Sauce fan, an involuntary DIY-er, husband to Tamara and dad to Samuel and Rafa.
And, after spending more than a decade as a professor at Blinn College, Alex has done something we find especially inspiring: he has become a student again.
Alex is now pursuing his Master of Fine Arts through Texas A&M University’s College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts — the same emerging program with which The Kimbell is building a growing creative partnership.
That puts him in an interesting place: teacher and student, established artist and experimenter, someone shaped by the Texas–Mexico border and someone deeply rooted in Bryan.
In other words, Alex himself belongs to many communities.
Perhaps that is why he is so interested in the ones we keep.
An Artist in Residence from the beginning
Alex has been part of The Kimbell almost from the moment we opened our doors.
He began serving as our Artist in Residence when The Kimbell opened in October 2025, and his residency will continue through at least this fall. For us, an artist residency isn't simply about providing someone a place to hang finished work. We want The Kimbell to be a place where artists can experiment, make things, collaborate across disciplines and invite the community into the process.
This exhibition is one expression of that idea — but not the only one.
Later this month, audiences will have the opportunity to experience an entirely different side of Alex’s creative practice when he joins fellow members of The Lumen Group for a multimedia music experience at The Kimbell.
Photography. Music. Projection. Memory. People. Place.
It’s difficult to imagine a better example of what we hoped could happen when we began bringing this long-dormant building back to life.
And maybe that is what makes this particular exhibition feel so right for The Kimbell.
A historic building is being given another life. An artist is returning to school and pushing his work in new directions. A portrait project is returning nearly ten years after it began. A community gets a chance to see how it has changed — and to remember some of the people who helped make it what it is.
Come find someone you know.
Meet someone you don’t.
Remember someone you miss.
And take a look at the community we’ve made together.
The Communities We Keep: New Work by Alex Garza
August 7–23, 2026
Opening Reception: First Friday, August 7 | 5–9 PM
The Kimbell | 607 N. Main Street | Downtown Bryan
Alex Garza is The Kimbell’s current Artist in Residence. This exhibition and residency are made possible with support from our community partners, including the Downtown Bryan Arts & Culture Association, Texas A&M University College of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts, and the City of Bryan, with funding in part through a City of Bryan Arts & Culture Development Grant.